Design Tips for a Cooler Home

When you live somewhere that experiences hot summers or is even warm all year, it can be hard to stay cool. If your house is poorly designed, it can heat up quickly and stay hot throughout the day. If you need to feel cooler in your home, you can make some modifications to the design. If you're lucky and you haven't built your home yet, you have even more room to design it for a hotter climate. There are lots of design choices you can make to create a cooler home that will help you to relax. Try these tips to stop your property overheating.

No Carpets

Some people choose to have wall to wall carpets in their homes. However, if you want a cool home, this isn't a great idea. Walking around on carpets isn't going to help you if you're hot, and it could trap the heat in. Homes in hotter climates usually have hard floors. If they're not wooden, they could be stone or concrete. Tiled floors is a popular choice in many places, including the Mediterranean. If you worry about it getting too cold during the winter, you can use a couple of solutions. Adding rugs in colder weather will help, and you could also have underfloor heating.

Shading Windows

When sunlight comes into your home through glass windows, it can heat up very quickly. The larger your windows are, the hotter your home might get. So if you have French doors, you might want to be cautious. Shading your windows is one of the solutions you can use to keep your home cooler. For example, you can buy window shutters to keep the sunlight from shining directly on your windows. Keep them closed during the hotter parts of the day, and open them up at night when it's cooler.

Promoting Air Movement

Having good air flow is one of the main ways to keep your home cool. A lot of people will use air conditioning for this, but you don't always need it. If you live somewhere that gets cool breezes or cools down at night, you can take advantage of this. Leave your doors open to let the air flow throw is useful. It also helps if your home has an open plan layout. However, if there are no breezes, some efficient fans or an air conditioning unit might be better for you.

Choosing Furniture Carefully

When you furnish your home, you should consider your furniture carefully. It's easy to work out that sitting on a hard chair might be preferable to peeling yourself off a leather sofa. Equally, you don't want to have faux-fur throws in your living room in the summer. You need to balance being comfortable when you sit and being a comfortable temperature. If you buy upholstered chairs and sofas, think about the fabric and whether it will get hot or irritate you in the summer.

There are several ways you can alter the design of your home to keep it cool. There might not be any need to switch the aircon on if you're careful.